With nothing else to do but wait for a few minutes, I did what just about anyone else in my situation would do. I practiced flying.
Well, perhaps practice isn’t quite the right word. Since the form and thus flying felt natural, I just flew, engaging in aerobatic nonsense while Jasmine indulgently watched. Flight was, well, magical.
Not just figuratively, but also literally. My wings flapped, but they weren’t exactly lifting or propelling me. It was almost like a directed hover. I could even fly backwards, albeit at a significantly reduced speed.
The hut of the home instance just wasn’t large enough to build up any real speed. Inertia still was a thing and, despite the flight feeling more like hovering, turning wasn’t instantaneous—as I discovered by nearly crashing into my AI assistant. Only her own reflexes saved us from a compromising tangle.
While I couldn’t build up much speed, I was able to match about what I thought would have been a fast walking speed for my regular self, and felt like I could go faster. Maybe if I had room to build up, I could have matched a running speed. However, I doubt I would have matched my more athletic sister.
Not that there was any chance of a race, like this.
Before too long, the monitor wall emitted a “ping” sound, flickered, and returned to its earlier message about generating a default characterform. A low hum filled the hut, reverberating off the walls, and the pillar of light once again formed front and center. This time, however, it resolved into a figure.
And what a figure it was.
She was short (well, from my perspective, tall), barely over five feet in height, but she was all voluptuous curve like a plump hourglass. Deeply tanned, but beneath long-lashed emerald-green eyes, she had a dusting of freckles that hinted at a fairer-skinned nature. Triangular ears that seemed more demonic than elfin poked out from the sides of her head, almost completely obscured by rich brown waves of hair that reached nearly to the floor and would be entirely impractical for any sort of wandering around a virtual world.
She was dressed somewhat plainly, in a basic short-sleeve and calf-length dress that nevertheless was rendered borderline provocative by the figure it concealed. For all that the cut and fabric was plain—perhaps all newly created female characters wore a dress of a similar nature (which suggested yet more sisterly future complaints)—the color was a match to the pink of the bandeau I wore now, though without the silvery glittery strands woven in. Her footwear was even more impractical: a style of sandals that left her feet mostly bare, with the sole of the shoes held on by two x-shaped crisscrossing sets of straps across the foot and about half a dozen crisscrossing up the calf.
<’Maybe’ what?>
With a gesture and more sparkling motes of light, she called forth an array of status screens around the proposed game character. Most of them had sliders and customization options, but the largest one on the left came forward a little and displayed text. Again, it was in English, and again I had to focus on reading it.
Mystic Aura (Tallemaja): Vulnerability: Iron. Expertise: Charisma. Aura: Woodland Allure.
The screen, like the one I had used to confirm my hivatar customization purchase, was a touchscreen in pink-bordered pale seafoam. Via touch commands, I was able to expand information about the racial trait.
Vulnerability: Each Faetouched Archetype has an innate weakness to a certain metal. They are unable to wear, carry, or touch items crafted from the metal they are vulnerable to. This extends to ore and ingots. Additionally, any damage dealt to the Faetouched Archetype by such metal is automatically critical. Tallemaja are vulnerable to iron.
Expertise: Each Faetouched Archetype has an innate affinity to one attribute. All checks made against this attribute have reduced difficulty and all gains (permanent or temporary) to this attribute are increased by 10%. Tallemaja have expertise in Charisma.
Aura: Each Faetouched Archetype has a toggle aura perk. When the aura is toggled on, the Faetouched Archetype gains a 50% bonus to magical resistance, a 50% penalty to physical resistance and a subrace specialty. Tallemaja have Woodland Allure which causes non-sapient creatures native to forest, field, swamp, and stream to not view the Tallemaja as hostile without cause. Sapient creatures from such environments are more likely to view the Talemaja as friendly.
My eyes got wider and wider as I read more and more about the character’s traits.
A bonus to attribute gain is effectively a bonus to experience and character level, provided the primary skills boosted that attribute, and a ten percent boost was quite a bit more than the Adaptability trait for the Human Archetypes that I had been considering. Granted, Adaptability was an across-the-board five percent boost in experience gain, so that would affect leveling all skills whereas Expertise only affected one attribute and the boost occurred after leveling up….
Then there was that aura. Probably not so good in combat because of the reduced physical resistances, but a very big boost to magical resistance could be situationally very useful. And that was the minor portion of the aura. With the aura on, a Tallemaja could go just about everywhere without worrying about being attacked since the monsters wouldn’t view her as a threat.
As if she were reading my thoughts—which perhaps she was capable of given the role of an AI assistant in a virtual reality—Jasmine spoke up.
She nodded,
While we were talking, I was playing around with the other screens, examining the customization options available, and they were myriad. I toyed with hair color and length, making it a more manageable length, just light blonde locks barely brushing her shoulders, adjusted the angle of her eyes and length of her lashes, and tweaked her physique.
Well, if tweaking can be defined as moving the sliders to either extreme, restoring to the initial settings, and adjusting from there. The game allowed a figure that ranged from a girlish waif to a full-figured matron whose curves were probably just on the other side of the line separating realistic from unrealistic—for fantasy art standards. In the end, she was a little taller than before with a bit less hip and a bit more bust. Then I toggled the character across to male. Even if my hivatar is a girl now, that doesn’t mean I want to spend the whole game as one. I do still have my manly pride!
But one glance at the boy-band pop-star physique of the male Tallemaja, and I quickly toggled him back to the female form I had been tweaking.
Objectively, I knew men could be attractive—I wasn’t bad-looking, myself—and I was (I thought) secure enough in my own sexuality to even be able to admit that some men were attractive. But what I wasn’t prepared for was to actually and not just in theory be attracted. Cheeks flushed and fanning myself, I looked again at the disparate customization screens I had been working with,
Behind me, Jasmine giggled,
For me, that settled it. She could read my thoughts. Throughout the day, I had been mulling the options I would have for a character and playstyle, and had tentatively decided on an Agility-focused character, a damage-dealer with a bow and back-up set of blades. Granted, archery did have its drawbacks, but being able to hit from a distance was a significant benefit in a game where pain tolerance was part of the effect of a sta- ah, attribute. Willpower would definitely get many of the AP as I leveled.
Meanwhile, I found the racial archetype and subrace portion of the interface and switched from “Faetouched: Tallemaja” to “Faetouched: Undine.” The character model morphed in front of me, becoming thinner, taller, and vaguely serpentine. Her curves were much less pronounced, but still enough to not be androgynous. Her coloration changed, too: tanned skin to pale, and short blonde hair to a longer, flowing black that billowed out behind her like a hooded serpent. She was still pretty, but was no longer the eye-catching, jaw-dropping, voluptuous beauty that the Tallemaja had been. Instead, the Undine was slender, sinuous, and subtly sinister. The displayed character had gone from the Cheerleader Archetype to the Goth Archetype, and I tweaked her starter dress to black to reflect that. Pink just did not work for her. Following that, I toggled her back to male and was decidedly relieved that I didn’t encounter the same near-swoon I had with the male Tallemaja. So it wasn’t that my mind was changed so that things other than flying and being in the body were “natural.” It was just that Tallemaja’s Charisma had that effect...even when it wasn’t an actual character yet.
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I cut her off, addressing her with her full name and continued,
A confirmation window interspersed itself between me and the customization screens, and I tapped accept and brushed it away after a brief skim through, confirming that I wanted to allow the AI assistant access to customize the home instance on her own, with a budget cap set at 0% of real money transactions and 100% of game-generated rewards.
She gasped and was uncharacteristically speechless, finally stammering a
What followed next was a fair bit of chatter and a whole assortment of characters, starting with buxom or buff elf archetypes (besides staying human for Adaptability, being an elf for early access to a spell was probably very powerful, especially for people who haven’t yet specialized into a casting class). The Tale’a’Dine, or Dark Elves, were probably my favorite from the bunch. Their subrace trait gave them access to a once daily area of effect pacify, basically rendering everyone or everything nearby as non-hostile as well as wiping their threat lists. I played with making the guy look a barroom bouncer and the gal like a tavern wench, at least so much as the very limited initial clothing customization allowed, imagining that their racial ability would be very beneficial for those lines of work. Well, not that I planned on either for myself, but an AoE pacify would be almost as useful out in the wild and unsettled lands as the Faetouched Archetypes’ ability to be viewed as non-hostile.
The Ria’Dine, or Wood Elves, and their once daily racial stealth were also appealing, turning my agility-based archer proto-concept into more of a hunter. I suppose that would also be possible for a Tallemaja, but wouldn’t it just be, well, wrong to hunt down animals who were magically affected to not view the hunter as a threat?
The other elves—High, Sea, and Arctic—had their own subtle differences in appearance and less subtle differences in traits, but honestly….if you see one elf (or a dozen elves!), you’ve seen them all. A top-heavy Na’Dine isn’t that much different from a top-heavy Ria’Dine or a waify Qo’Dine from a waify Tale’a’Dine. Hair styles, physiques, coloration, etc—and I played around with a lot of options—but an elf is still an elf. There were other racial archetypes to experiment with.
The various Dwarf Archetype clans were probably not much suited for agility, but their customization options allowed for the short, stocky, and burly options common in games and stories to short, thin, and cutesy—more of what I would consider halflings or gnomes from other game and story settings. Female Dwarfs, unlike most of the other races, were even allowed facial hair settings. I spent a long while customizing one of the Rockhammer Clan subrace: her long, voluminous red beard, forked and braided, reached her knees and did a more than adequate job of concealing her well-proportioned figure. She even sported a magnificent handlebar mustache.
I avoided the Undead Archetypes other than making a quick ghost and confirming there were no vampires as a subrace. I doubted that a Zombie or Mummy subrace could be made appealing even with all the customization options available, but the ghost was a slightly translucent, tow-headed young boy I immediately named Caspar (and just as immediately erased the name).
I was able to craft a human that looked just like I normally do, then one that looked like this flying mermaid form had become a human. I even managed to make one look much like my sister, mostly by toggling the one resembling me to female and increasing the bust. However, I moved on to other characters fairly quickly: it was a bit unnatural and more than a little creepy to consider playing a character based on my twin’s appearance. I did, however, get to see what I would look like with more Asian features or with darker skin as if from an African heritage than my own northern European ancestry.
Neither the Golem Archetypes nor Draconic Archetypes interested me much despite their bonuses. In addition to being elementally aligned, the six Draconic subraces each received a bonus to a certain profession, such as blacksmithing or weaving. It struck me as a little limiting to have such a bonus hard-coded to a subrace. How many Stoneshapers, who receive a bonus to artificing, would go on to become blacksmiths or gardeners? In contrast, the Golem Archetypes were also profession focused, able to start with a production tradeskill that didn’t take a primary or secondary skill slot, but they received little other from their traits besides a boost to their subrace’s preferred attribute.
More importantly, I couldn’t craft an appearance that interested me. Neither the scaled hides and nonfunctional leathery wings of the Draconics nor the stone or metal bodies of the Golems were something that I was interested in.
Jasmine suggested that I look at the Harpy Archetypes because their trait was Winged Flight, but they gave up a lot for that bonus. The vulnerability that the Tallemaja had to iron seemed trivial compared to the Harpies’ penalties. They had wings, true, but they had wings instead of arms. The lack of arms and hands would significantly limit their equipment options. No weapons, shields, rings, bracelets, gauntlets, enchanted gloves, or so on. It reinforced Jasmine’s earlier point on why this hivatar of mine wasn’t a playable race. What disadvantages, other than no legs and a diminutive size, would balance out our manner of flight?
Still, I played around with the Harpy customization options for a bit longer, just to see what the game allowed. And, in a way, they had much, much more variety than most of the other archetypes for one simple reason. Plumage. For someone willing to spend a lot of time at it, each individual feather could be separately colored. I didn’t go to quite that extent, but I did have three Harpies that I was rather proud of. The first was a young female with white-speckled brown plumage and fuschia hair in a short reverse bob. The second was an older, more distinguished male with flowing grey hair and robin-like coloration. And third was a corvid, black feathers shading to indigo at the tips and a set of curves to nearly rival the Tallemaja. I guess in a fantasy world, magic trumps physics for aerodynamics.
That left the Beastkin Archetypes to experiment with while I tried to decide between Elf and Human Archetypes for my actual character. The Yonaxi were bear-like, with rounded ears and short stubby tails, both easily concealed depending on attire and hairstyles. Even though they tended to buffer or more bulky builds, with traits that enhanced their lifting and carrying capacity, the customization options still allowed them to be slender. I giggled as I customized a diminutive girl with Asian features and named her Pandachan. But with a moment’s reflection, I decided that was probably racist—real world racist—and swiped the name away and the subrace to Lapis.
Still a bit self-conscious about my earlier misstep, I didn’t take the time to customize the rabbit-based subrace quite the way I otherwise would have, though I bet there will probably be quite a few “not naughty, just customized that way” red-headed rabbit girls in the game’s future.
Still dwelling on whether I had been wrong or not, I had difficulty focusing on the customization, and even toggling the Lapis to male didn’t help, so I resolved to wrap up my experimentation with one more character before starting to work in earnest in how I wanted to appear in the game’s world.
I had played around with all the archetypes—some more extensively than others—even if I didn’t delve into all the subraces. In most cases, they weren’t that different in appearance from their Archetypal cousins: dwarves and elves and humans are dwarves and elves and humans no matter what. But the Beastkin were like the Faetouched and Undead in that each subrace had a very distinctive appearance.
From Lapis, I went to Tauros, and was greeted with a massive, burly, dark-skinned, tall, tall, so very tall man who would have given the famed Minotaur of myth an insecurity complex. His bovine appearance was limited to a black-tufted tail, black bovine ears, and a truly impressive set of horns. Well, and his size and musculature.
I tweaked him down and down to a slender and short youth, then toggled him across to a girl. Since this was to be the penultimate character, the last before I created myself as a human or elf, I took my time with her and got involved enough with the customization that my earlier unsettled thoughts faded to the background.
I made her short. Well, she was still many times taller than my hivatar was, but if she stood on tiptoes, she might reach four-eight. With her short stature, I made her a bit childlike in appearance, too. Her berry brown face was a bit rounded, with hints of so-called baby fat, and her figure was pretty much flat, nearly the diametric opposite of the Tallemaja the game had initially generated for me.
Her large, wide eyes were golden brown, flecked with hints of silver, and I dithered a little on her hair color, trying several shades, hues, and even styles out. Eventually, really dark red—almost black—hair in short puffy twin ponytails brushed her shoulders. I couldn’t decide between black and carnelian, and thus the deep garnet shade. The tuft of her tail matched, but her bovine ears and the length of her tail were a furred brown, darker than her skin color.
Then, I went through and played around with the various clothing options, not that there were all that many. The young Tauros went through several assorted dresses of similar styles, a tunic and pants similar to the default outfit that male characters start with, and a variation of the tunic with really short shorts (which, to my eyes, were more like swimwear). Finally, growing aware that I had spent a tremendous amount of time in the character generation process and hadn’t yet even played the game, I settled on customizing the outfit she was currently displaying: a short robe, or maybe a wrap, in an off-white shade, perhaps eggshell or cream. It would have been a sleeveless dress but for the fact that it was open from her neck to the just-below-the-knee hem. So, underneath the robe she got a black band of fabric across her chest, a bandeau in a style like I was currently wearing, and a matching pair of bikini bottoms, low-rise to accommodate her tail.
At the very top, the dress-slash-robe-slash-whatever was fastened with a small clasp. And lower, it was gathered together and held closed with a dark yellow, goldenrod maybe, sash that was tucked into itself and folded over with the loose ends hanging nearly to her knees and thus concealing most of the gap in fabric below her waist. Finally, a broad headband of the same material as the sash was added, contrasting nicely with her hair and almost matching her eyes. Pinned to the headband was as artificial yellow flower fashioned from a ribbon.
The last step was to give her a name. I hadn’t named too many of the characters I had created while experimenting, and most of them were names I had immediately regretted and deleted away. I didn’t want a punning name for her; I wanted something that looked and sounded like a real name, something someone would actually name their daughter. Nevertheless, because she was a cow, my mind drifted to names with a “moo” sound, like Mulan or Muna, or to things like changing Mary to Moory.
After discarding a host of such names including Moogaret and Moodelyn, something about the last one caught my attention, and I mentally reverted it back to its proper form: Madelyn.
Madelyn. That would work for her, but it sounded like an old-fashioned name, something that almost requires a second name to go along with it. Now tired of thinking of names—something I have never been that good at—I tacked on a girls’ name that I was intimately familiar with.
Madelyn Alexis.
Satisfied, I flew back and did a lazy circle around her, looking the character up and down.
Madelyn Alexis’s character image wavered. The various customization screens popped out of existence. The monitor that comprised the fourth wall of the hut emitted a deeply resonant chime. And I heard Jasmine’s voice behind me.
The world exploded into silver, pale seafoam, and coral motes of light before I was able to protest.